22
Avis
I CLICK ON THE
television to see if the cable has been turned off or not. The instant I see the banner going across the bottom, I know. “Las Vegas police officer shoots woman at traffic stop.” I sink to my knees, gripping the remote as if it could change time, as if I could turn off the TV, and with the force of the no inside me, turn time back, back an hour, back two hours—how long would we need, to start over, and for this not to be true?
There is no other information. The banner runs below a Channel 10 special about Nevada’s wild horses, which was taped months ago, and even though it is almost evening, I cannot find local news on any station. I know that I should call Lauren, or Jim. I know that I should do something, confirm something, but already, I know.
I knew when Nate wrecked the car.
I knew when he was pulling Lauren’s head back with her hair.
I knew when I heard him tell Jim that he and the guys had pounded shots after work in a dive off Boulder Highway.
I knew when he stepped off the plane the last time. I knew the instant I hugged him, that little course of energy through his body, that slight shiver.
THE PHONE RINGS. FINALLY STOPS.
Starts again.
I don’t recognize the number, and I don’t answer it. Has a name already been announced?
I turn on the laptop and see that there is already a short story in the
Las Vegas Sun
. Just the minimum. No names yet. But the woman is dead. And my God, she was driving an ice-cream truck. At Pecos and Hacienda, not three miles from me. Worse, there were two children present. No more details.
The six-thirty news leads with the story. A routine traffic stop escalates to a shooting. There are preliminary reports that the woman had a knife, that she was threatening to kill her own son, that she did not speak English. The woman’s husband and children were inconsolable. The father is in temporary custody, the children have been sent to Child Haven. There will be more later. Channel 8 will provide more details as they learn them.
I check the phone then. Lauren called at 5:51. Jim at 5:58.
I hesitate, not sure who I should call first, and then dial Jim’s number.
“Avis, where are you? Have you seen the news?”
“Yes, I’ve seen the news.”
“Nate was the officer who shot the woman.”
“Yes, I imagined so.”
“You imagined so? Really, Avis?”
I hear the anger in his voice. Should I hide that I knew? What good would that do? There’s a pause, and I can’t think of what to say, so I don’t fill it.
“Nate’s at the station. He’ll probably be there awhile. His phone’s not on, and Lauren’s pretty upset. Darcy and I are headed over there right now.”
Darcy. Did he tell me to warn me, or so that I would not come?
“I can leave now. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Um, sure, yeah. You should probably be there.”
This will be the first time that Jim and I and Darcy have been together with the kids.
“Maybe it’s better if you and Darcy go now. I can go later, or when Nate comes home. I can go tomorrow.”
It is Jim’s turn to be silent.
“Jim?”
“Yes.”
“We knew Nate wasn’t right. I knew he wasn’t right. I don’t know what to do.”
“I can’t talk about that now, Avis. You don’t even know what happened. Already, you’re blaming Nate. If he needs a good lawyer, we’ll get him one.”
If he needs a good lawyer.
“Darcy knows a lot about public relations. About how you handle this sort of thing. She can help.”
Darcy. Public relations.
“Jim, call me when you know something more. If Lauren knows something. I’ll be right here.”
I don’t wait for his answer. I know that I am close to losing control.
ABOUT EIGHT THIRTY, THERE IS
a new banner on the bottom of the screen: “Witness disputes that woman had knife, and says she was ‘clutching child.’”
At ten, there is a statement from the chief of police. They are investigating the events that led up to the shooting. The officers involved have been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation. The department extends its condolences to the family of the deceased, particularly her children.
The phone rings again. It’s Jim.
“Nate’s still not home, but he called Lauren. Apparently the woman had some sort of mental illness. She freaked out when they stopped her. Started yelling about Allah. Nate thought she was going to kill her son.”
For a moment, I am hopeful. Maybe Nate hasn’t done anything. Maybe it is Nate who has been saved. Maybe my son was almost killed this evening, and he was not. He is still alive.
“The partner’s a problem. A witness heard him asking Nate why he took the shot. Where the knife was.”
And I fold. Maybe Nate is innocent, and damn me if his own mother didn’t believe him, but I have seen Nate’s hand twisted cruelly in Lauren’s hair, I have seen Nate rushing toward Rodney, and I know that my son is not himself. Something has happened to him, and now something has happened to someone else.
“Avis. Pull yourself together. I don’t know what you’ve been doing all night, but we’re still a family. Nate needs you, and you’re going to have to get it together.”
We’re still a family.
“Avis, are you there? What are you doing?”
I don’t know what I am doing. I never knew what I was doing. I just jumped in and tried, no manual, I tried as hard as I could, and for the second time in my son’s life, I missed the important cue. The first time, a boy was paralyzed. The second time, a mother has been killed. It wasn’t because I didn’t care, it wasn’t because I was lazy, it isn’t because my son is a bad man. Nate is a good man.
“Avis? Avis?!”
I hear Jim’s voice, and just as clearly, in just as ordinary a way, I hear two children crying. I hear Rodney and I, huddled in the closet, crying, while our mom’s head is banged, once, twice, three times, against a wall. And I hear two other children, I can’t see them, but I hear them, they are crying for their mother. They are terrified, and I hear the sound of the shot, and then I hear them crying.
Should I explain this to Jim? That my mind is playing tricks on me and that I can hear children crying while he is speaking? There was a time when he would have understood.
Instead, I tell him that I will be at Nate and Lauren’s house tomorrow. I tell him that I am sorry, sorry for everything, I ask him to tell Lauren I love her, and then I hang up.
Immediately, the phone rings.
It’s Rodney. Did he hear the crying too?
“Avis. It’s Rodney.”
His voice is thick. He’s been drinking, of course. But he knows. Just like me, he knew as soon as he saw the story.
“Was it Nato?”
“Yes.”
I hear Rodney’s shivery, shallow breathing. He always has a hard time breathing, and when he drinks, it’s worse.
“Avis?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember Mark?”
“Yes.”
Again, the breathing. I am fighting to breathe too. Thinking of Rodney. He’ll be sitting in the dark, just the television on, his lunch plate still on the coffee table, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s within reach.
“Mark was a vet. Do you remember that?”
“Yes.”
“Remember that time Mom said she wanted to go to Italy? She wanted to dance with an Italian man?”
I want Rodney to stop. I remember the time, I remember what Mark said, I remember what happened.
“Rodney, I remember. Please, I remember.”
“Our Nato’s not Mark, Avis. He’s not Mark.”
“No, he’s not Mark, Rodney.”
There’s no sense trying to talk to Rodney. He’s too drunk, and there’re things he won’t talk about anyway, but I wish I could talk to him. If there’s anyone in the world who could understand what I feel tonight, it’s Rodney.
SHARLENE SAID IT AGAIN.
“Fifty dollars. The guy gave me fifty dollars! He just peeled one off the top of the stack. Said he could take me to dinner later too.”
This time Mark does not even bother to curse at her, to scream. There is just this roar of his body flying across the room, and my mother’s yelp, and then the sound of both of them slamming to the floor.
Sharlene screams. Mark yells.
“You slutty, shitting bitch! You fucking bitch!”
And there are more sounds, of struggle, of body on body, of pain.
I take Rodney by the hand, he shakes violently, and without a sound, Rodney picks up his blanket, and I take two pillows, and we slip into Sharlene’s closet. This is where we go when we are afraid, when Sharlene comes home too late, when something bad happens on the strip of concrete outside our apartment door. In the back of the closet, where the roof slants too low for Sharlene to stand, and where she has stashed winter clothes she rarely wears, Rodney and I keep our own stash. My old black bear. A bent postcard from Stanley, who was one of Sharlene’s boyfriends, the only one that ever wrote to us. Two decks of casino cards, with a hole in the middle of each one. Rodney’s plate with the picture of Elvis on it.
I curl into my usual spot, but Rodney puts the extra pillow in his and settles into my lap. We often sit like this for the worst bits, Rodney’s soft blond hair against my cheek, my arm wrapped across his small body. Having Rodney changes everything. His warm body relaxes me, and I can feel his shaking start to slow, soften, almost stop. But it is harder this time, since it is not just that Mark has hit Sharlene or that they are yelling. No, they are still fighting: their bodies crashing into furniture, into the walls.
Thunk. Thunk.
Rodney wiggles out of my lap and stands up at the other end of the closet. When he comes back, he has the gun he told me about, the one in Mark’s brown bag, the one he found when he was playing in the closet alone. He hands it to me, and I take it. I have never seen a gun, much less held one. It is heavy. And cold.
Thunk.
Rodney shivers in front of me, eyes on mine.
So quickly, before I can be afraid, I take the gun and go out to the living room where Sharlene and Mark are fighting. I aim the gun in the direction of Mark, not sure how to hold it. It is much too large for my hands.
“Stop!”
“What the fuck?”
“Stop hurting her.”
I can feel Rodney behind me, his chin against my back.
“Give me that gun, you little shit.”
Mark lunges at me. And then fast, faster that I can think, Sharlene is there, tugging the gun from my hands, throwing me and Rodney backward onto the floor, and Mark is grabbing at Sharlene, and they are struggling, struggling for the gun. But Sharlene wrenches away, aims the gun straight at Mark—it is not too big for her hands—screams at him to get out, get out, get out.
And Mark’s voice is soft now—he is calling her a crazy, stupid bitch—but I can hear the uncertainty, the fear, in his voice, and he backs away toward the door, and Sharlene is screaming, “Get out! Get out!” And then Mark lunges toward her. And the gun goes off. There are two sounds, the bullet pings off something and then hits something else, but it does not hit anyone—not Mark, not me, not Rodney. Mark flees.
Sharlene stands there, a stunned look on her face. There is total silence.
Then the sound of a siren.
And Sharlene sinks to the floor, crying harder than I have ever seen her cry.
“I could have killed him. I wanted to kill him.”
She is bleating like an animal and moaning, and she has not looked at me or Rodney at all. She does not know that the ping, the ricochet, did not send the bullet our way. She didn’t look.
“I could have killed him.”
Rodney stares at me, eyes wide. He is perfectly quiet.
When the officer walks in, hand on the grip of his gun, our door is wide open, and we are just like that: Sharlene murmuring and crying, and Rodney and I, motionless, silent, stunned.
“Ma’am. Ma’am. What happened here? What’s going on here?”
And then Sharlene is trying to stand up, and she motions to the gun on the floor where she has dropped it, and she is muttering, “I almost killed him, I could have killed him.”
By the time the policemen leave, there are two of them, they have taken the gun, they are telling Sharlene that they will find Mark, that she might want to think about moving to another place, getting away from this guy, that she has two kids to look out for, that next time they might have to take the kids, send us to Utah for foster care, that a gun is a really serious thing, and if someone had been shot, they wouldn’t be able to do much, to protect her, to protect the kids. They say they will stop in every now and then to see how she is doing.
And Rodney? He goes to sleep. One of the police officers gives him a chocolate lollipop, and he eats it, eyes wide, watching the policemen. And when the candy is gone, when he has eaten the stick into a gluey white pulp, he falls asleep, in the middle of the upturned chair, the broken lamp, the police officers talking to our mother, one with his arm around her shoulders.
I don’t take a lollipop. I don’t say anything.
Not to the policeman. Not to Sharlene.
She never looked at Rodney and me. She never looked to see where the bullet went.
I REMEMBER THIS. I DO
not want to remember it. I have spent my life not remembering it. But I can’t stop it now, now that I have talked with Rodney, now that Rodney knew, right away, that it was Nate who shot the woman with the ice-cream truck. I remember it, I remember it all. I remember the closet, I remember the crying. I still hear two other children, crying, crying, as their mother falls to the street in front of them.
Because I need to do something, because I learned a long time ago that remembering, by itself, is a path to hell, I do what I should have done years ago—should have done when Emily was still a baby, should never have allowed in the first place.
I go upstairs, and I take that gun out of my dresser, and the bullets out of the closet. How many times have I thought nervously about that gun since I first discovered it in my drawer five months ago? How many times have I wondered if someone would find it, if someone would use it? How many times have I tamped those thoughts down, not wanting to remember, not wanting to have this very memory that I have now had?